Posts Tagged ‘Review’

I often think I was born in the wrong century. I guess playing a game or reading a book about such things is likely a lot easier than actually living in those times, but there’s just something about castles and knights and sword fighting! I love almost anything “medieval” but sadly, I can’t say I love The Sims Medieval.

I mentioned a few months back on here about how excited I was for the release of this game. It seemed like they’d announced it forever ago, so when I realized it was March 22, I ran to my local game store and happily managed to get one of the “Exclusive Limited Edition Content” versions. I had no idea what to expect as I installed it onto my computer, I’d seen trailers, but hadn’t read anything about how the game would actually work.

It turns out The Sims Medieval is very different from The Sims. You create characters, starting with your Monarch who lives in the castle, based on which structures you decide to place. You get a “doll house” view of the buildings when you play, which you can furnish and decorate, but you can’t actually change the structure in any way.

You can only play certain characters depending on which quest you decide to work on. You get a list of quests to chose from and can spend your quest points to accept them. You can only work on one quest at a time, and if you have to abandon the quest, you don’t get your quest points refunded. Each kingdom only gets 50 quest points to work with, and once those are spent you can no longer level up your characters or earn achievements. I found this out after building up my first kingdom, and was very disappointed that I had to leave all the characters I’d worked on and gotten attached to behind to start all over. I decided to keep playing though, because I was curious about what new types of ambitions could be unlocked for kingdoms and because each time you complete a kingdom, it unlocks new clothes and items.

My next kingdom had the ambition to conquer all the surrounding kingdoms. I don’t have specifics because I wasn’t able to do so, (which I’ll talk about in a moment) but there are about 8 neighboring kingdoms that you can spend your resource points (gained from completing quests) to ally with. Once you’re allied with a kingdom, a special quest will become available to annex them. I decided to ally with Aarbyville first, the pirate kingdom. The annex quest had three options, I could assassinate their leaders, I could invade them, or I could have a Bard marry their Queen. I didn’t have a Bard yet, but had just made a fancy new Spy I was itching to try out, so I decided to go with the assassinate option. I played through the whole questline, and at the very end I had killed all the gang leaders and was supposed to challenge the Queen to a duel. I did so, beat her, and nothing happened. I tried again, beat her, and again nothing happened. I’d run into a few glitches that I’d managed to work around, so I spent the next few hours loading and reloading the game and trying everything to get my duel to count. Eventually I realized I wouldn’t be able to work my way around it, so I grudgingly abandoned the quest, losing 3 precious quest points that would have helped speed my domination along. In the final step to the assassination quest I was able to chose which of my characters should duel the Pirate Queen. I had chosen my Monarch, but I figured since I was now very familiar with the quest, I’d just speed my way through it again and this time I’d chose my Spy. After another hour or so I was finished the quest, and to my horror the same thing happened. I was forced to abandon the quest, losing another 3 quest points, and redid it using the invasion option, which worked fine.

By this time though I was quite frustrated and didn’t play for a few days.

I just went back to it this evening to work away on my manifest destiny, and after some very careful planning (because I would now have 2 less quests to use to complete my objective), I decided I would take over Burdley next. I was using my knight to hunt down squirrels when my daily objective popped up to “Duel the Challenger”. I’d done this many times before, having leveled my first knight to 10 (which is the level cap), so I headed out to lay down a knightly beating. I dueled him, won, and the objective did not complete. I thought, “oh no, not this again” and dueled him another time. It didn’t work.

Now the daily objectives are different from your quest objectives. You get two daily objectives each morning at 9am, and you complete them throughout the day to gain experience and up your overall quest progress rating. If you manage to get a Platinum rating, you get bonus resource points, of which I was sorely in need after my glitchy Aarbyville takeover. I decided I couldn’t miss that daily, sure it would have only been a debuff and some missed xp, but honestly I was just sick of things not working. My boyfriend had run into even more horrible time consuming game destroying glitches than I had by this time, and a few of his had been fixed by exiting right out of the game and restarting. I figured I’d try that, so I hit “save and quit”. What pops up next but a blue screen of death! So windows crashes, I restart my computer, start the game up, click on my kingdom and what message do I get? “A serious error has occurred while loading “Sovereign.tsm”. It is strongly recommended that you restart the application.” Restarting the application didn’t help. I guess when the game crashed my computer, it also corrupted the save, so I’m going to have to start that kingdom all over again. I don’t think I’ll bother.

For a spin off game of something as popular as the Sims, you’d think they’d put a bit of money and testing into it to make sure it actually worked before releasing it. There are numerous quests that are bugged or don’t work at all. A large number of people have issues with their video card clashing with the game and restarting their computer over and over. I read about someone who had to actually reinstall Windows because the game went so wonky and on top of it all, it’s basically impossible to make a character that actually looks good! I get that it was medieval times, but I’m sure they could fashion some kind of makeup! So far I’ve managed to make one slightly pretty elfish Sim, but that’s only one out of nearly 20.

I’m disappointed, to say the least.

This game had great potential and even held some appeal for people who weren’t big Sim fans. It was a cool idea for an adventure game, and rarely when things were working, it was a lot of fun and slightly addictive. Unfortunately if this had been the first Sims game I’d tried, I’m sure I’d never play another. I’ve wasted many hours trying to fix things that shouldn’t have been an issue, and also feel like I wasted my money on a game that was not really finished. It does have the option to be updated, and if they fix all the problems with it in a patch someday that would make a world of difference, if I could ever get over the anger and frustration I’ve accumulated playing it this past week to ever give it another shot that is. So honestly, if you’ve been considering picking up a copy, don’t!

Have any of you been playing it? Are you as fed up and frustrated with it as I am? Have you come across any bugged quests or items to stay away from? Leave me a comment and let me know!

I am still alive! Though I’m not sure I can say the same for my WoW subscription…

I had never even heard of RIFT until I noticed people mentioning it on Twitter. I had no intention of playing another monthly subscription MMO, and figured I’d just give it a try once they came out with a free trial, just so I could see what all the fuss was about. Circumstances dropped a “free trial” right in my lap only a couple days after release (thanks to access to a friend’s account)

My Warrior

and after about an hour, I was fishing out my credit card for my very own copy. I went into RIFT wanting to hate it. WoW has been a big part of my life over the last 5 years and I felt like RIFT was just the shiny new toy in the sandbox that everyone fights over. I was determined to remain loyal to my dear WoW, so I was on the lookout for RIFT fails from the moment of my Ascension. That was days ago, and I still haven’t found any noteworthy disappointments.

For those of you who are as in the dark about RIFT as I was before jumping into Telara last week, it is basically WoW, only with lots of little things that I always wished Blizzard would implement but never did. Like what you ask? I prepared a list…

My Mathosian Rogue

-ARMOR DYE! PINK armor dye! (Well, light purple, but it looks pink)
-Great looking characters
-Awesome character customization
-Instant Auction House mail
-Sweet looking armor/weapons early on
-There’s so much going on all the time with RIFTS and Invasions
-Amazing class builds
-Public Groups (no more having to wait to invite someone to group while they decline and steal your quest mob!)
-You can “salvage” armor and weapons you craft for some of your crafting materials back!
-You get three professions!

These might seem like silly trivial things, but sometimes it’s the little things that count! RIFT has everything that WoW has; PVP, Quests, Professions, Achievements, Dungeons, Guilds, Auction House, Lore, Etc, but then it also has improved or corrected a lot of the things that have always bothered me about WoW. I didn’t think any game could ever get me to leave my 160,000g or 12 level 80+ characters behind, but I don’t even feel bad about it! I know I could still be in the “honeymoon” period with RIFT, so even though I’m pretty sure RIFT can hold my attention for the next few years, I’m giving myself until the end of March to play WoW again before canceling my account, just in case.

My Kelari Rogue

So far I have a level 19 High Elf Guardian Cleric (who is just adorable) and she is my “main”. I have a level 18 High Elf Warrior that I really like as well and a level 11 Mathosian (Human) Mage who has Crumbly, her stone elemental guardian to tank stuff for her, hehe. I also have a level 6 Kelari (Dark Elf) rogue with pink pigtails! You can only have 6 characters per “shard” (server), but so far that’s been okay. My Guardians are on the Millrush shard and my Defiants are on Kelpmere.

In addition to questing and fighting off Elemental invasions, I’ve been working on professions. So far I have a miner, butcher (skinner), forager (herbalist), armor smith, and an outfitter (tailor + leatherworker). I’ve also been playing the Auction House a bit! I was sad I couldn’t afford a mount right away, so I hit the Auction House to do some flipping! I’ve already made 15 platinum just buying cheap artifacts (which you collect to turn in as sets for vanity items such as funny helms, pets, and mounts) and selling them for more. Now even my baby characters get horseys! Hopefully it won’t take me too long to become RIFT rich, since I’m thinking the RIFT AH will be pretty similar to the WoW one.

My Cleric

Hopefully none of you are thinking, “I’m not reading this blog anymore if she doesn’t write about WoW stuff!”, but if you are… Go try RIFT! Honestly, I haven’t read any bad reviews on it or heard of anyone disliking it so far! Plus I still might keep WoW active, if only to log on when I’m REALLY bored and do Archaeology, lol. I do want that Troll sword, even if I’ll never use it.

What are your thoughts on RIFT vs WoW? Have you been playing RIFT? What’s your favorite race, class or faction so far? Leave a comment and let me know!